Inward Paths Profile: JM Ashwell

Born and raised in South Africa, this author relocated to Texas in 1996, when a business opportunity brought she and her family half way around the world. Leaving her profession in the healthcare field she became a full time mom but returned to her passion for writing.

She wrote her first article when she was eight years old. It covered the assassination of the president of South Africa and her teacher told her then. "You won’t go into medicine, you were born to write." She has walked the forests that Tolkien did when he wrote The Hobbit and understands full well why he wrote the stories there.

Using her African roots and medical background, her work - including her poetry, has garnered a number of awards, including: The Horton Award; the Opthalmology award and the Wedgeworth award; current listing in the International Who’s Who of Poets which features another of her award winning pieces called Twilight in Eden, as well as Best Poets and Poems 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. Her African wildlife stories are read to kindergartners in Texas and her fantasy series is already two and one third books strong, with an eye to spinning them off into the biggest theme park in the world.

Her first two thrillers "Tomorrow a Rainbow" and "The Emeralds Flashed", have been read by CEO’s, senators, world famous actors and directors in the USA, England Canada and South Africa and both these books and her short story Christmas at Jim’s Place are under consideration for conversion to screenplays. Additionally Barnes and Noble named her their Texas author of the month in July 2006. In 2006, her short story Saturday Morning at eMkhambathini was published in Highlights Magazine. Additionally she is included in the bestseller by John Randolph Price called Nothing is Too Good to Be True. Her third book Echoes of Madness is due for release this year and the outline for her fourth thriller, a sequel to Tomorrow a Rainbow is in the final stages of research.

This author has been the subject of newspaper articles and a number of television interviews and has been featured on Lifetime Television who called her ‘an author to watch.’

Whilst the thrillers have a medical/psychological flavor; are compared to the work of authors like Robert Ludlum and Robin Cook and frequently showcase Africa as the backdrop for the stories, her fantasy series, is quite literally out of this world.

Her research for the fourth book led her to the field of phenomenological psychology based on the work of Bert Hellinger, a world renowned psychologist from Germany, whose work is based in part on his observations of the Zulu culture in South Africa where he was priest for several years. She is now training to be a facilitator in the work in order to deepen her understanding of the human psyche and our connections.

Now, she contends, it’s time to go mainstream and be guided by those with experience in the field of publishing. Her reason for not doing so originally? "I didn’t want to be a one hit wonder or expect someone else to do the hard work for me."

With her fourth book in the thriller genre, in the research stage and her third book in the fantasy series one third complete, as well as a partially conceptualized theme park, she remains a busy author.

Other accomplishments: Crisis counseling, rape crisis counseling, interactional motivation assistant trainer, certification in phenomenological psychotherapy, theater work, singing, voice over work, qualified chocolatier, international skating judge, siamese champion cat breeder. Former ballroom , Latin and disco dancing champion.

Interests: Hypnotherapy, Hellinger phenomenological psychotherapy and forward creationism.

Outlook on life: Utterly optimistic and intensely curious. Where kids like to pull apart toys to see how they work, she is interested in interacting with people in depth, to understand human polarities and courage and our limitless ability to generate and experience joy.